Government and Civic Affairs

A 30-minute documentary film produced by Atlanta History Center that explores the history of the monument from all angles, including the origin of the carving, the complicated relationships between the carving and contemporaneous historical events, and the key players who worked for its completion. The film is meant to inspire deeper learning and constructive conversations about this monument and what it represents to many different people.

How did the world’s largest Confederate monument end up outside of Atlanta? What should be done, if anything, with it? With these questions in mind, Atlanta History Center explores the controversial history through online resources and an upcoming documentary.

“One Hundred Years of Georgia Women Legislators” is a Historical Series that will not only tell the story of Georgia’s first women state and federal legislative representatives and highlight other notable Georgia “firsts” that have held legislative positions over the course of the last century to now, but it also highlights the effect these women have had on Georgia, the South, and the United States of America.

When driving down a busy street in Atlanta, you may find yourself on a different road without making a turn. These seemingly nonsensical street name changes are due to past residential segregation practices enacted when white Atlantans did not want to share the same address as Blacks.

Atlanta History Center is using our resources to explore the history of the components that make a healthy democratic system, including methods of civic engagement, widespread and informed voter participation, civil rights, and community leadership.

Board of Park Commission Minute Books hold significant information, reflecting the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in urban spaces during the early twentieth century.

Atlanta History Center records, preserves, and makes accessible the stories of men and women who did serve as well as the civilians who supported them. Their stories allow future generations to hear directly from those who lived through our nation’s conflicts to better appreciate the realities and the sacrifices of war.

We created a guide to help Georgians prepare to exercise their right to vote, select the method by which they vote, and to identify and report instances of voter intimidation––on November 2 and beyond.

Atlanta History Center is home to one of the nation’s most comprehensive collections of Civil War memorabilia including a growing number of rare objects identified specifically with African American USCT soldiers and regiments such as a canteen, swords, a rifle, brass drum, knapsack, Bible, badges, a Medal of Honor, and a USCT flag.

Atlanta History Center online exhibition: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith

Atlanta History Center online exhibition: Responding Heroes: Remembering September 11, 2001

This summer, along with history and civics organizations across the country, we invite you to join in a program dedicated to the Civic Season.

In 1962, Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. ordered the construction of a barricade served to sever the main line connecting the white and Black sections of the Cascade Heights neighborhood.

For more than fifty years, Ethel Mae Matthews worked tirelessly for greater welfare rights for Atlanta’s poor and disabled.